When a doctor wants to send a patient to a specialist or other health care provider, a referral is usually pretty low-tech — a phone call, fax or piece of paper.

But Pranam Ben, CEO of Visions@work, a Clermont-based health care information technology firm, wants to change that. He said a computerized system can transfer more patient information and better coordinate care between the referring doctor and the specialist, plus save on paper and staff time.

That’s why he’s offering Preferr, his firm’s new Web-based electronic referral management system, free for a year to Lake County’s 600 doctors and four hospitals through a partnership with the county, Lake-Sumter Community College and the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission. The Lake County pilot program “will be great testimonial for us to release the product nationwide and worldwide,” Ben said.

An electronic referral system may streamline the process, instead of having a referral clerk do it manually, said Ellen Cannella, practice manager for Leesburg family practitioners Dr. Steven Hawk and Dr. Jacqueline Puglia. “It definitely sounds like it has potential.”

Carol Millwater, executive director of Lake-Sumter Medical Society, said her organization is excited about the pilot, but wants to learn more about it to ensure doctors get the maximum benefit.

The 104-bed South Lake Hospital in Clermont is still considering the pilot program, said John Moore, the hospital’s chief operating officer. “We see enough merit in it to investigate it further.”

However, Florida Hospital Waterman’s 204-bed hospital in Tavares has a system with similar capabilities and won’t participate in the pilot, said hospital spokeswoman Bonnie Zimmerman.

Kathy Houser, spokeswoman for the Central Florida Health Alliance, which operates the 309-bed Leesburg Regional Medical Center and the 198-bed The Villages Regional Hospital, said she wasn’t sure if the two hospitals would participate, since they already have electronic referral systems.

Visions@work spent more than $500,000 to develop the Preferr platform, said Ben. The money came from himself and other investors.

The new computerized system has yet to generate any revenue, but Visions@work’s services division, which builds Web sites and other applications for businesses, expects to end fiscal year 2009 with more than $100,000 in revenue. It has 20 U.S. employees and 60 workers in India. Ben is the only Clermont employee, working out of a home office.

If the pilot program succeeds, he will expand his Clermont operations next year, moving into a 1,500-square-foot office and hiring 10 to 15 employees in sales and administration. The salary range for these new positions has yet to be determined.

The health industry — one the county would like to see grow — employs one out of every six workers in Lake County, or more than 14,000 people, said Dottie Keedy, Lake County’s director of economic growth and redevelopment. “Visions@work is a startup company, but we think it can grow into something much bigger.”

Eventually, Ben wants to charge $25 a month for doctors to subscribe to the system. Hospitals would pay $500 a month, plus a $6,000 set-up cost.